Hermione leaned back against the sturdy oak chair in the Room of Requirement, her workspace illuminated by the warm, flickering glow of enchanted mps. Scrolls, tomes, and hand-drawn diagrams surrounded her, forming a cocoon of knowledge that she eagerly mined for answers. The air buzzed with faint traces of magic from the room itself, adapting to meet her needs as she dove deeper into her research.

  Her thoughts were tangled around the nature of magic. Not spells or wands, but the raw essence of it—the primordial force underlying every magical interaction. She had discovered tantalizing hints in an ancient tome titled Magical Phenomena and Leyline Theory, which had been collecting dust in the Room of Requirement's extensive library. It described magic as a river flowing through the fabric of existence, with leylines acting as its tributaries.

  These lines weren’t just physical; they were intertwined with the nd’s essence, creating wells of "wild magic" where they converged. Such sites weren’t just natural phenomena—they were keystones of magical civilization. They nurtured early magical ecosystems, sustained communities, and even shaped the evolution of magical practice.

  The book cimed that before wands, structured spellcasting, or even runes, witches and wizards relied on the untamed energy of wild magic. It was a chaotic, instinctive power that flowed freely through the nd. House-elves, for example, still channelled magic in this way, wielding it effortlessly and without incantations.

  Hermione’s quill scratched furiously across a parchment as she noted examples of leyline wells influencing myth and history. The so-called "Lady of the Lake," for instance, wasn’t some immortal enchantress as the Arthurian myths suggested. Instead, she was a proto-potion master who lived near a leyline-rich ke. Her ethereal beauty, Hermione realized, was likely the result of salves and tonics enhanced by wild magic, while the "enchanted" sword she gifted to Arthur was simply the first magical bde resistant to dulling and corrosion.

  But leylines weren’t passive; they evolved, creating what the book termed "Evolving Magic." Over centuries, pockets of wild magic became enchanted forests, living waters, and even sentient beings. These ecosystems created a symbiotic retionship: magic enriched the nd, which in turn enhanced the flora, fauna, and magical creatures inhabiting it.

  The ke was what was known as ‘Evolving Magic’ a product of the convergence of Wild Magic, this was likely the source of enchanted forests, sentient magical creatures, and cursed locations so the book proposed. This Evolving magic, if stable would then create a symbiotic effect, creating an ecosystem that would enrich the leyline and the ground around it, making it the least magic resistant, effectively a slipstream for the leylines to stay still, which in turn allowed more wild magic into the local area, enriching the fauna further and creating enchanted forests.

  This framework led Hermione to reexamine Hogwarts itself. The castle wasn’t simply a school built in an isoted location for convenience. It stood at one of the strongest leyline convergences in Britain. The nearby Forbidden Forest, far from being an unintentional hazard, was a necessary component of the leyline’s stability. Its magical ecosystem banced the powerful convergence, feeding magic back into the lines and preventing chaotic surges. Without the forest, the wards surrounding Hogwarts might colpse or mutate.

  The Leylines would find the routes of least resistance, much like waterways, once they had a route and flowed into the nd, it would then seep some of the energy into the nd creating fertile conditions for magical fauna, a bleed effect from the raw pure magic. The pnt life would then absorb the magic, metabolise it much like pnts photosynthesised and would then release wild magic along the leylines, this wild magic would then be in the atmosphere and be breathed in through the respiratory system of magical animals and be metabolised into their blood. A Magical core was another structure that only existed in magicals that allowed the storage of fully metabolised magic. It was this metabolised magic, that was used for spells and the exertion of effects on the physical world.

  This expined why magical education had always centered on specific institutions. Young witches and wizards burned through magical reserves as their cores developed, and leyline-rich environments like Hogwarts ensured they replenished quickly. The boarding school model wasn’t just traditional—it was essential.

  From these foundational ideas, Hermione’s thoughts spiralled into more complex implications. If leylines shaped geography, ecosystems, and magical development, what about magical nguage? How did the spoken and written words of spell craft interact with these flows of power?

  And this was where her research was really finding merit, wizards created magical words and nguage! Not in the sense that mermen had a nguage, that was magical in it’s nature, it was simply called magical because a magical creature spoke it, but the words held no power. No, wizards, goblins and even Elves had made their own magical nguage though the use of leylines.

  This, was what she needed to know, this was what would elevate her casting to a new level, understanding how magical words affected magic wasn’t detailed anywhere in one single volume, in studies into wards she had come across a tome called Origins of Younger Futhark, which talked about where the runes came from, essentially a Rune meant Secret, as in a secrete nguage only a few could read and understand, it was initially thought to be a way to communicate with people without it being intercepted. It was believed that those who understood runes where able to wield magic in the muggle world, but her in the ancient texts hidden in Hogwarts, it was confirmed as true, these runes were used for early enchanting and creation of magical tools, but they needed the casters magic to activate them, meaning they couldn’t be used for defenses, but did allow for the early formation of spells, but these spells couldn’t leave sting effects as they were localized to where the rune was carved and the power source i.e. the caster.

  This was how a wizard known as Loki, son of Odin, was considered the Trickster god by his use of illusionary effects, he wielded a weapon called L?vateinn, which was a Galdrastafir from post Viking era in Norse era such as the Norse Compass and The Helm of Awe. Another relic of the past grandiose by folk tales and the tales evolving over time. It was believed Odin at the time gifted runes to the people, in fact this wasn’t far from the truth, it appears he had made the Younger Futhark and given it to ‘his faction’ at the time.

  She set that thought aside, turning to Anchors and the Annals of History, a text that delved into the precursors of modern ward stones. It described “Anchors,” primitive magical constructs that tied spells to leyline networks. These were the first steps toward persistent magic, enabling communities to create semi-permanent defences, but not wards they didn’t have the power yet but it allowed for illusions etc. Anchors weren’t purely defensive; in ancient times, they were tools of war, allowing cns to cim and protect leyline territories

  These stones when pyed on a leyline would allow you to exert your spell effects along its length and in any enchanted nds that grew from those leylines, as the lines moved, the magic would wear with time. Any damage caused by ‘direct force’ would remain, but constructs, illusions and transfigured items, would revert almost immediately once the leyline moved, this is what resulted in the first wizards war, the battle for nd, wizard cns would pce anchors along the same leyline and then have a territory war, because both their magics were anchored in the nd. The groups that won were the ones with the better magic and rune sequences built into their anchors, this war helped push the evolution of the magic and rune sequences to create the modern bases for magic.

  Eventually, a magical community was built where multiple leylines converged, further expanding the influence of the cn now able to exert power along multiple lines and area, creating the first inklings of a magical network. Any area in between these leylines controlled by the same anchor, would allow magic to persist even when the runed staff/wand was taken away, albeit with weakened effects due to the ck of wild mana, but it persisted because the magic was anchored from multiple sides.

  She confirmed this to be the case from history showing that this was also one of the reasons for the first goblin war, wizards were not the first to discover this effect and the goblins focused more on runic weaponry than spells like the humans did, probably due to the access to underground ores and veins vs wix focusing on wood, magical fauna and animals to craft with, hence the variations in their peoples magics. This made a lot more sense as to why there were so many wars between the 2 kind peoples, it was a ward to gain the others magical secrets to strengthen their own positions, but as each group moved from their respective leylines and anchor stones, their magics would weaken creating clusters, which oddly, matched the various magical communities across Great Britain.

  Eventually, these anchor stones started being called Ward Stones, this change in terminology matches the dates when the first ward spells were mentioned in the books, so an intuitive leap suggested that anchor stones and ward stones were the same thing, just an evolved version of them from the wars previously. Anchor stones had been depicted as Ste and Large rocks, whilst Ward Stones looked closer to Large Gemstones, it suggested that some of the battles vs the Goblins while lost on paper, hadn’t been about the nd, but about the resources themselves for the wards, these wards then allowed the wizards to protect their homes much like the goblin nation did, effectively removing the advantage goblins had.

  So, Goblins hadn’t managed to learn the secrets of wands and staff magic, but humans had managed to learn the Goblin’s for warding. This expined the bitterness expressed by Goblins to all Wix, and why Wix felt they were superior to Goblins because they had won. Goblins having lost the war for the surface then also lost access to food stuffs, the reason why Gringotts existed was probably to allow the exchange of resources, minerals and gems from the Goblins Underground Hordes vs Food and potion ingredients/herbs etc. from the Surface World. The various pacts and treaties were to ensure food for the goblins and resources for the Wix to continue evolving their magic and protecting their people. This was never expined in Binn’s csses and would make people more receptive to the animosity, but it wouldn’t improve attitudes, it would make the Wix more arrogant towards the Goblins.

  Hermione’s quill paused. Could this also expin the house-elves’ servitude? She knew their magic was tied to service—both a cultural and magical bond. But what if their submission was a survival strategy? Unlike goblins, who fought wizards for supremacy, elves may have willingly anchored their magic to wizarding households to ensure protection.

  She wondered if this meant, the Anchor Stones magical wards and syntax had encoded some sort of magical w for the treaty’s to ‘be bound by magic’ along with the Elves servitude as another form of magical contract. If this was the case, then it made sense that these ‘ward stones’ or ‘Anchor Stones’ also held the details for magical nguage use by using phenetics rather than full words (it would be easier to craft) and would expin why not just the letters were important but the pronunciation, Wingardarium Leviosa was actually Wing-gar-dium Levi-o-sa, make the 'gar' nice and long. Because the words and letters weren’t what was recorded but the sounds themselves.

  This train of thought brought Hermione back to her own abilities. Her affinity for Parseltongue wasn’t just a genetic quirk—it was a magical nguage steeped in leyline resonance. Parseltongue might not operate through vocabury but through phonetics, each hiss and sylble echoing the wild magic embedded in the nguage’s origin.

  What if Parseltongue’s power came from its connection to an ancient leyline nexus? Could there be a repository of this syntax hidden somewhere, accessible only to those who shared the bloodline trait? What if it was an attempt to create a new warding nguage, that wasn’t understood and therefore couldn’t be broken? This is what probably gave the Slytherin line its edge in combat, not knowing what the spells being said were, their effects and you weren’t able to break their effects if you couldn’t speak the nguage.

  Hermione’s quill resumed its furious motion, sketching a diagram of the potential interaction between leylines, magical cores, and phonetic spells. Incantations like Wingardium Leviosa weren’t just words—they were vibrational keys unlocking leyline energy. The precise pronunciation of each sylble was a trigger, a way of harmonizing the caster’s core with the leyline system.

  Her diagrams became messier as she worked, exploring the possibility of leyline interference spells, ward stone syntax, and magical “viruses” or corruption that could corrupt entire leyline networks. Could Voldemort have tapped into this knowledge and if so that made him such a deadly threat. Her mind made the connection before she could finish ‘but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not...” what if, Voldemort hadn’t learnt the secrets of Parseltongue, what if that was the power he knew not, and harry getting a sliver of his soul was built into the prophecy, so he could learn this power he didn’t know about… but then that meant… Hermione had this power he knew not…

  Hermione paled suddenly at this thought, something she hadn’t considered when she woke up as Hermione, her parents had ‘defied’ Voldemort by existing, you could twist the wording to mean them, they had both had their cores destroyed at his instruction because their very existence defied his cim to Lord Gaunt and the other impacted an ally of his, did an act of defiance vs his minions count against his as their lord? And then they gave birth to Hermione, who was their third, combined defile…. A true Heir to the Gaunt’s through magic? The attacks against her family had marked her, perhaps not physically, but the prophecy never said a physical mark.

  Hermione started to panic a little at this, occlumency shields not doing much to stem the tide of emotions and terror this brought, would this mean her family would be targeted? She then recalled the st part of the prophecy she had skipped in her haste ‘born as the seventh month dies...’ she wasn’t born on this month, so it didn’t refer to her. She calmed down at this…

  She returned to her notes, considering how much more deadly Voldemort would have been if he had discovered this theory and the consequences of it, instead of just learning more to become more powerful, it was unlikely he’d pursue knowledge for it’s sake, but for the power it could offer, but if he had…

  Hermione shivered at the thought. Voldemort’s understanding of magical theory far outpaced that of most wizards, yet his desire for power had blinded him to the deeper theory. As she reviewed her notes, a cold voice whispered in the back of her mind:

  "Perhaps he believed the consequences made him stronger."

  She paused, her heart pounding. The voice wasn’t hers—it was sharper, colder, and disturbingly logical. Another thought followed, equally chilling:

  "How easily his hubris destroyed him. What will yours do?"

  Hermione’s breath quickened. She forced herself to set the quill down and steady her hands. The room was silent, but the weight of her thoughts was deafening. She knew that voice, she had heard it once before coming to Hogwarts.

  "You cannot escape your destiny, Hermione Granger. For you are already mine, do not forget the deal you made”.

  She spun around to face behind her, wand snapped into her hand with a flick searching for the voice and threat, the soul inducing fear that voice invoked in her rattled her, wand arm shaking as she surveyed the room and found it empty, her magic tightened around her chest like chains. Casting Revelio produced nothing.

  She gathered her things and ran out of the room and made her way to the dorms before she was caught out after curfew, the magic lessening its effects on her chest as she made her way closer. Making it safely to her dorm, wand still in her hand and disillusioned she made her way to bed. Calming down somewhat now she wasn’t alone and had people around her, she settled to sleep, but as she drifted off to sleep, an unsettling thought made it to her mind…

  “My birthday in my old life was the 31st of July….”

  Saltzil